Why do we have a whole month for Men’s Mental Health? Would men rather talk about their interests such as their favourite football team than to talk about their emotions and feelings?

Do we need a month for men's mental health awareness?

May was the Mental Health Awareness Month and you may be thinking why should the following month June be Men’s Mental Health Month. Would men rather talk about their interests such as their favourite football team than to talk about their emotions and feelings?

This is my take on this, I am not aware of a Women’s Mental Health Month. If it is a thing then please share with me. The simple answer from my point of view is that women find it easier to talk to someone about how they are feeling compared to men, whilst men find it hard to open up about their feelings. Don’t get me wrong there are also some women who lock up their feelings as securely as Fort Knox but in most cases women will open up to someone about their feelings and emotions rather than keep it all in.

In my opinion I believe that women are much quicker to accept that there is a problem and that they need to speak to someone whilst it may take a man a longer time to get to the point where they accept that there is a problem. It will then take them a long time before they feel the need to speak to someone.

This is my theory regarding this, in general women meet each other more often. These meetings could be telephone conversations, coffee dates, lunch or brunch dates or dinner dates to name a few. Whilst men don’t do coffee dates, definitely the ones I know don’t neither do they do lunch dates and here I mean one to one outings. Women on the other hand regularly meet with their pals for one-to-one outings compared to men. I know because my circle of close friends and I regularly meet for coffee catch ups or lunch or dinner and sometimes a whole afternoon outing for afternoon tea or dinner in another city with a show at the theatre thrown in.

These are one to one opportunities that my friends and I use to share more deeply on anything that’s troubling us, causing us anxiety or low mood. Being able to talk to someone who you can trust without judgement makes a lot of difference. We definitely leave such catch ups feeling lighter and better in ourselves.

I might be completely wrong but from what I have seen and observed, when men do hang out with their pals, their conversation is usually around their interests. Men who are passionate about football will spend a lot of time talking about their favourite team. I have first-hand experience of this because for sure that’s what my husband does. You only have to mention Man United and he is off. For the next hour he will tell you all about it but if you ask him, “how he is he would shrug his shoulders and just say “I am alive and surviving.” You would not get more from him without pushing and prodding. This is typical of the men that I know.

They know all the stats, all the itinerary of the team they support. They have opinion on each player and the manager. They would even give advice on what the manager should be doing with the players. Yet they find it really had to talk about themselves, if you ask you will get just surface answers nothing deep and meaningful and you have to dig and prod to get to know how they are feeling.

So yes, we need another whole month to focus just on men’s mental health and hopefully what we started last month will reap some results during the course of this month. Sisters, wives, mothers and friends don’t give up digging and prodding the men in your life just do it gently and be ready to listen without judgement or a box full of action plan. Getting the men in your life to talk is the first and most important step, don’t shut them down by giving them a long list of things to do to help them.

I would love to hear from you and how you are giving the men in your life the space to open up this month of men’s mental health.